1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a personal weapon system, and more particularly, to a microprocessor-controlled and electronically fired "blow-forward" handgun with a firing parameter memory device, programmable piezo-resistive trigger, and high frequency A.C. ignitable primer.
2. History of the Prior Art
Guns and rifles have always been, in effect, "dumb" weapons. That is, they have traditionally been unable to provide weapon-firing information to law enforcement officers for crime lab reconstruction. Following a crime involving a conventional handgun or rifle, investigators may be able to match a gun to the crime through ballistics matching if a bullet is found at the scene, but all other information concerning a shooting is lost or must be painstakingly pieced together from extrinsic evidence, with a good deal of guesswork and uncertainty. Investigators need to be able to reconstruct crimes in terms of the number of shots fired, time and date of firing, and direction of each shot fired. It would be a distinct advantage for crime lab reconstruction to have a gun which sensed and stored such information for later retrieval and analysis.
Another limitation of conventional guns and rifles is their use of mechanical firing and safety mechanisms consisting of simple mechanical linkages Which enable or disable travel of the trigger and hammer. Such mechanical linkages may be either mechanically or electrically actuated. Typically, the safety mechanisms of conventional guns are designed to prevent only unintentional firings of the gun by knowledgeable operators. Generally, such safety mechanisms are not able to prevent unintentional firing by people who are not knowledgeable of the operation of the gun, such as children. Children may unknowingly release a safety mechanism, or may release the mechanism in play, believing that the gun is not loaded. Thus, existing safety mechanisms have led to numerous tragedies involving accidental shootings. Additionally, existing safety mechanisms have not been able to prevent unauthorized personnel from firing the gun. When a gun is stolen, for example, it becomes a deadly weapon in the hands of a criminal.
Several existing safety systems have attempted to solve this problem by providing mechanisms which block the mechanical action of the gun until a security code is entered. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,022,175 to Oncke et al discloses an external safety system which may be plugged into a handgun for the entry of a security code. U.S. Pat. No. 4,563,827 to Heltzel discloses an external safety system with a transmitter which sends a security code to a handgun to either mechanically arm or disarm the weapon. All of these existing systems are very complex. A simple safety system, built into the weapon itself, is needed.
It should also be noted that safety mechanisms on conventional guns have been known to fail and allow the gun to discharge when the gun is subjected to a sudden impact, such as dropping the gun to the ground. It would be a distinct advantage to have a gun which cannot be fired by anyone other than a knowledgeable, authorized operator, and which will not discharge due to sudden impacts.
Some existing handguns incorporate mechanisms to count the number of ammunition rounds remaining in the clip or magazine and display this information to the operator. The sensing mechanisms are generally mechanical mechanisms which are complex, subject to mechanical failures such as sticking, and add significant additional weight to the handgun. The displays for such mechanisms are generally strap-on displays which are attached to the side of an existing handgun. The operator, therefore, must take his/her eye off the sights and the target in order to read the display and ascertain the number of rounds remaining. This may be a grave disadvantage, for example, to a soldier in battle, a police officer in hot pursuit of armed criminals, or a competitive shooter in a rapid-fire shooting match. It would be a distinct advantage to have a gun or rifle with an electronic rounds counter which is highly reliable, adds very little or no weight to the gun, and which incorporates a display which is integrated into the structure of the gun, directly below the sight. The operator would not have to shift his/her gaze off of the sight or target in order to ascertain the number of rounds remaining in the magazine.
An additional problem with conventional guns and rifles is that they do not provide a way to program the amount of trigger pressure necessary to activate the weapon, nor do they advise the operator of the amount of pressure remaining before firing. A trigger pressure which is too heavy or too light can affect both safety and accuracy of the weapon. An extremely light setting, for example, may result in a "hair trigger" which can be dangerous if the operator is not aware of the setting. Inaccuracies occur when the trigger setting does not match the trigger setting which is preferred or anticipated by the operator because most inaccuracies are a result of the human/trigger interface. When the gun fires with a trigger pressure lighter than expected, or if the operator must squeeze harder than expected, accuracy can be adversely affected. It would be advantageous to have a gun or rifle which provides the capability for each individual operator to program the amount of trigger pressure necessary to activate the weapon, and which advises the operator of the amount of pressure remaining before firing. This capability would improve weapon safety and accuracy.
Conventional guns and rifles are also limited in their ability to program the number of rounds fired in each burst in an automatic mode, nor can they program the delay between individual rounds in a burst. For military purposes, it is sometimes desirable to fire a handgun or rifle in an automatic mode in short bursts of 2 or 3 rounds. Military automatic handguns suffer from a recoil effect in which the muzzle of the gun is deflected upward after each round is fired. In the automatic mode, this deflection grows more pronounced as the length of the burst increases and more rounds are fired. Generally, only the first 2 or 3 rounds are accurately fired, and the remaining rounds in the burst are wasted. It would be desirable to have an automatic handgun which enabled the operator to program the number of rounds to be fired in each burst, which reduced the recoil effect experienced by conventional military handguns, and which would automatically delay the firing of subsequent rounds until the handgun sensed that the operator had overcome the recoil effect and returned the handgun to its original line of fire.